North
by Maireh
Summary: He has had killed but he hadn't meant to do it, the first time at least. He is thief but only because he hadn't had much of a choice, it is that or starve. He has made mistakes, done wrong, known what he was doing while he did it, but he cannot stop. Dunion hasn't the will to stop, and so he continues... Until he can't.
1. Chapter 1

_____________I do not own the Inheritance Cycle.  
This story is about the character Dunion from my story, Lirouratr. I wanted to write about him, since the moment I introduced him in Lirouratr. I did this apart from the main story because I didn't want the two of them together would be too much, intertwining them like that. Anyhow this is a bit different from Lirouratr, and something I think I will enjoy writing. This story can stand on its own, but you'll understand it better if you have read Lirouratr.  
I do not own the song.  
Reveiw if you have a moment to do so.  
And enjoy,_

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Chapter One

There was once a time, long ago, when his father had told him of his grandfather; a man who was tall and proud, and it was his pride that caused him to seek a better life, and as he sought for this better life he was murdered. His murderer hadn't killed him for riches, he had very little of it, nor was he killed for his actions, he was kind man, he killed by mistake. His grandfather's death was unwarranted and pitiful, much like his success in life, from the Laws of the King an innocent man had died for crimes he had not commented. Unlike his grandfather, whose name he shared, Dunion was not so innocent.

He had killed, yes, but he hadn't meant to do it, the first time at least. He was thief but only because he hadn't had much of a choice, it was that or starve. He had made mistakes, done wrong, known what he was doing while he did it, and the sickening disappoint his father would be bound to have if he were alive, but he couldn't stop. Dunion hadn't the will to stop, and so he continued.

He looked over the lady, she stood proud in front of him, a vase in her hand held high in readiness to strike. Its contents lay on the ground in a small puddle of water, tiny yellow and pink petals from which a sweet smell drifted. She looked ready to scream for help, and Dunion couldn't hide the smile that flickered across his lips. She wouldn't dare, or she shouldn't at least.

Dunion fingered his long hunting knife, twisting it a bit so that its red stained blade flickered in the dimmed light. Pulling the strap of his sidesack closer to his chest, he looked her over. The sight of her was delightful, a lean and trim figure cover by a thin delectate lace nightgown, he could see the parting of her legs in the glowing light streaming through the window. After so many nights alone with no other company than a dog he allowed the slim figure of her to burn an image in his mind.

She opened her mouth, there it was, she was going to scream, and find that no one would come. Pity.

Only she did not. "Pl-please don't," she said, it was more of a whisper. "Please, I'll give you anything. Gold!" She gasped as he came closer. "Plea-please! Papa has gold! Lots of gold! That's what you want isn't it?"

Oh, why, yes, Dunion _wanted_ gold, but not as much as he wanted to see her squirm. At least for a time. "Aye," he said in a cold voice. "I want yer gold." She visibly relaxed. "Jest not at this moment."

Her big brown eyes widened widen even more, which he didn't think was possible, and she backed away from him until she was corned against a wall. "Please," she kept whispering. "Please, don't. Dear Seigfrida blessed sister of Muir the divine, protect me. Don't let him do this." She was praying now. How pathetic. "Protect me from this wickedness that wishes to taint my blood. Please, Seigfrida the protector, watch over me. Pl-please. Please! _Please!_" The last part of her begging prayer was hissed out as she bit back a sob.

Dunion couldn't help the annoyed sigh that escaped him. Why were women so pathetic, in their belief that some divineness was going to swoop down from the skies and save them? It was very unfaltering. No wonder the noble women needed their father to ensure they would be wed, and even less wonder that it was generally men as old as their father who married them.

"No one's comin'," said Dunion drawing closer. "And no one's listenin' ter yeh, so shut yer mouth."

She continued in her prayer, and she soon becoming hysterical in doing so, calling on more gods or saints and protectors. In an attempt to shut her up, Dunion slammed both of his hands on either side of her face. She screamed and backed even further into wall, her hitched breath warm as it ran across his face. The vase, which she must have forgotten about until now, rose and she swung it at him. He jumped back, and with a quick movement he smashed it with the flat of his blade. Tiny blue chards whipped across the room and landed on the ground with tiny little _ting_s that echoed in the empty massiveness. She whimpered.

"Please," she tried again but Dunion had heard enough, and his hand quickly closed around her throat.

He glared at her through his eyelashes. "I said ter shut yer mouth, you noisy wench."

She was hardly a wench, he knew, her loosen hair and fearful eyes told him that she was maiden, completely pure. She was young and probably charming, with a cheerful smile and a love of lays and romance, dancing in the sunlight and weaving crowns of flowers, and it was likely that she thought he was going to take all that away from her.

He let her go, and backed away. It was not his right to mark her as his and then leave her to a life as an outcast- he didn't want her, and he definitely couldn't afford to give her what she wanted in life. Blast it! He could hardly keep the bellies of his siblings full.

She whimpered again, and this time he reached into his side bag and pulled out a sachet, a roughly sown sack filled with sleeping herbs, and he forced it against her face. It took time, and he gained new scratches and bruises that he didn't really need, but she fell into a black sleep. Dunion picked her up then, and carried her to her room, the one she had scrabbled out of when he entered. She had run a ways down the halls and through grand room before Dunion had cornered her, and she picked up that silly vase.

He set her down on a plush bed in the middle of a high walled, luxurious room, and then pulled the cover over her. He left the room then and returned to the dining room. Once there he picked up the vase pieces and opened the shuttered window and threw them out along with the flowers. He didn't want anyone to think that he might have touched her, that lady, whoever she was. It didn't really matter, but she seemed to him to be around the age as his sister, as soon as he realized this he knew he was in trouble and he couldn't truly harm her.

After the room was sort of picked up, he didn't want to waste much time cleaning it when hadn't the time to waste, he shuffled through the manor, bagging the most valuable goods he saw they weren't what he was looking for, at least they _looked_ valuable.

The manor was bigger than any he had ever gone in before, and more colorful. The colors almost made him sick. It took him some time to find it, but he did and tucked it into a tied pocket in his shirt. He was going to thank Thelma in some grand way for thinking of sewing that in for him.

When he left the house it was in the darkest, coldest part of the night, and he was almost sad to have to leave the sheltering walls of the manor behind. He went the way he came, through a small port hole that was completely unguarded, and traveled up a hill and down a winding trail, until the manor wasn't in sight anymore.

"Oy!" someone yelled. Dunion gritted his teeth and bit back a curse. "Dunion! Did yeh get it?"

"Hush, yerself, yeh big lout," he growled. "Them shield will hear yeh."

Nerth gave him a humored looked. "Have yeh seen Trahern when yeh was in there?"

"Nay," he said, thankful that he hadn't. "He an't come out yet?"

Nerth shook his blond head, and looked up at the walls. "How much longer, do yeh think?"

Dunion shrugged. As if he knew! Trahern was always changing plans, and corning women; who knew what it was that he was doing, but it wasn't leaving that was for sure. For a moment Dunion thought worriedly over the lady he left in her bed, then shrugged. He didn't do it.

"Let's go," he said.

"Yeh sure? Trahern an't gonna be too happy knowing we left him."

"We'd all be less happy if we stayed and got caught."

Nerth saw reason in these words and grunted in agreement.

It didn't take them too long to get to their encampment, they took a short cut, and they heard where it was before they saw it. Long, bays filled the night air before they got there, and soon they were greeted by a small dog with soft, floppy ears. She barked at them happily, and then whined until Dunion leaned down and greeted her. "Hey, girl," he said scratching Wolf behind the ears. After she was satisfied with his greeting, she rolled over her tail wiggling between her legs but Dunion was going to have none of that, and he patted her on her belly and stood up to walk away. Wolf rolled back onto her feet and followed after him, her nose pressed firmly to the ground as she sniffed in huffing snorts.

Wolf had found him two years ago, when he and his youngest sister were returning home from the town market. Abagail had been talking about what she was going to sew out the fabric they had bought, he remembered because it had bore him to tears. They had gotten into an earlier argument in which he stated that she should be simpler, less wild and more like the woman in town, and this was something he later regretted. He didn't remember her exact words but he thought she meant to make herself a dress, and she was going on about the different designs and the latest fashions, something she knew almost nothing about but had likely heard from Thelma, when something growled at them. Their first thought was that it was a wild dog or a wolf, and Dunion had quickly drawn his weapon and shouted at the thing to scam. The thing did not, it growled again, and then leapt at them. Abagail had screamed, and dropped the fabric in a puddle of muddy water before running a little up the road, more out of surprise than anything. Dunion had simply stared at the dog, it was a small thing, that barely reached his knee in height, and its fur was so filthy he didn't know what color it originally had been and full of sticking barbs, and the biggest eyes he had ever seen. It had growled again, and Dunion reached into his bag, unknowing what he was doing, and pulled out a slice of meat which he tossed to the thing. That was a big mistake, because after the dog ate the meat it followed him home. The only reason he had allowed the dog to stay was because he had been overruled, by both of his sisters, his little brother, and Namma, and he cursed them for it. Abagail had been quick to crown the dog the name 'Wolf' for the scare it gave her, and Cai had laughed about it for a week, because of how much Wolf did not _look_ like a wolf, in the boy's eyes it was hysterical. Ever since Wolf had been a part of the family, and it followed Dunion around everywhere he went, she was always at his heels, always a company and he was grateful not to have to travel alone, when he wasn't with these thugs that is.

Parlan, a doughy man with one eye, was sitting by the fire poking the wood below the flames with a smoking stick, humming a silly tune. He looked up when they entered the encampment. "Ai oh," he said in a singsong voice. "How'd it go? Did cha git whatcha needed?"

Dunion nodded, looking at Parlan warningly and the humming stopped. "Trahern come back?"

Parlan shook his plump head, and returned to his poking, singing softly under his breath;

_Lady, I am one who truly endures  
Your wishes, so long as I can truly endure;  
But do not think that I can endure it for long  
Without dying since you are so hard on me,  
As if you wanted to drive me away  
So I should never see your gently body, which has such worth  
That you are of all good woman the best._

The man wasn't a good singer, so the tune and pitch was off, his voice crackled even at a whisper. But Nerth had sat down beside him and joined him the song, with the two of them together it sounded like a deathly screeching more than a singing. But that was Nerth, the man was willing to make a fool of himself to indulge his friends.

_Alas! Thus I imagine my death  
But the pain I shall have to endure  
Would be sweet if I could only hope,  
That before my death you let me see you again._

Dunion sat down also, Wolf lay down beside him, pulling out his blade to clean it with a scrap of cloth, letting the ill-used song wave over him. Every so often he held up the sharp blade of the hunting knife to the firelight to examine it, it glistened in the red glow. He kept his mind trained on his work, empty of all thought, until the blade was clean of blood. Then he stood up and swung the blade through the air.

"It still working, Dunion?" He started slightly and grinned at the jest. "Er did it stop working somewhere inside that noble place?"

"I'm thinking it stopped working," he said. "Want ter find out if I'm right?"

Nerth grinned and shook his head. "Not terday if yeh don't mind."

"I don't."

Dunion shrugged and went to his pack, Wolf got up and followed him, where he sat down, leaning against the packs and closed his eyes. The ground was cold and slightly wet beneath him, and the air had a deathly feel to it, the wind so cold it nipped at his bare skin, numbing his fingers and face. The trees overhead looked like long, crooked boney fingers reaching out in the dark night, the stars were a soft silver light blazing coldly above as they watched those beings below toil endless. He clenched his cloak around him and turned over, willing sleep to come his way. He slept alone that night, only with Wolf as warmth, the dog had huddled inside his cloak, on that cold, hard wet ground,until the sun rose in layers of grey, then pink and orange, and lastly a flawless blue.

Life hadn't always been like this for Dunion, there once a time when he had slept in a warm bed away from fear and hate and destruction but that time was gone now, and he could no longer afford to think of it. But that was where his problems started, in his thinking, though the man no longer wished to think of reality, it kept coming back to him, like Wolf had when she first found him. Reality was an unpleasant issue, full of bitterness, that he wished to escape, but knew he could not.


	2. Chapter 2

_______________I do not own the Inheritance Cycle._  
I haven't forgotten about this story, just haven't felt like writing it. Sorry, for the pitifully long wait.  
To those who haven't read Lirouratr, this is written off of it and there for it is written off-canon.  
Enjoy,

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Chapter Two

When Dunion was small child his grandmother, Namma, had told him a tale of a rich and foolish king. The king was very lucky; he was a wealthy with plentiful and peaceful lands and his people were happy, he had a lovely wife and many handsome sons and beautiful daughters, and yet he was unhappy. One day, when he feasted upon a grand meal with his wife and all his son and all his daughters, he heard a tale of enchantment by a laughing loreman. He was told of a ring that could grant any wish, fulfill any desire, high above in the mountains, but the ring was protected by guardians, a group of skilled warriors vowed to shelter the ring from harm. When the king had heard of this tale he became gripped with passion to find the ring, and he packed his traveling bags and collected his men and left to go into the mountain. As he reached the mountain a terrible storm came and a great frost set over the land, and the man could not continue forth for there was a blinding snow and he could see nothing. He stayed in the mountain for three days, nothing had happen expect for the cold and nothing could be seen expect for white. And then there was a terrible howl, like that of a wailing wolf, and the king ran out of his tent and called forth his men, who were half frozen, and looked out into the white blankness. That was when they saw a horrible sight. It seemed as if the clouds theirselves had stepped onto the earth, a great thundering echoed through the mountains, and monstrous beast stepped forth. It was a beast constructed wholly of vapor and wind and thunder. The beast roared again and many of the king's men ran, or threw theirselves over the cliff onto the rocks below. The king look up at the beast in despair as the beast had brought out the death of all his men, and then the beast disappeared with a great howl, leaving the king to his fate. That next moonrise the king he froze to death, and his death ended the tale. Namma would look at him then, with her intense eyes, and say, "Do not forget that to be thankful for the life you given, for good or not, it is yours." And then she would pat his cheek and turn away to cook something, expecting him to find something useful to do. He did most of the time, thinking over the king's pitiful death.

Dunion was not awoken by twittering of birds or chattering of his companions, but by a wild hooting and a dog's grumbling warnings. He rolled over, his mind still muddled by his dreams, and looked at the raised hackles on Wolf, and he petted them down. "Get 'em, girl," he said to the dog, as he yawned. "Attack."

Wolf howled again and jumped up, running very quickly into the center of the camp, growling and barking the whole way, skidding on loose stones and dirt. Dunion shook his head and chuckled lowly. He placed his hands on the ground and stood up, slowly walking to the center of the encampment, sore and stiff from the night he spent sleeping on the ground.

"Gid off me, you mangy cur!" This comment was met by a grumbling voice, complaining about the early hour of the morning. Dunion looked up at Trahern as he swatted Wolf away from him, the poor dog simply continued to wag her tail and return to him as if he had something scrummy in his hands. "Curse you, Dunion," Trahern said, glaring at him, "fer leavin' us like that." He swore and spat onto the ground, commanding that Dunion get Wolf away from him.

"Come here, Wolf," said Dunion, looking pointedly at the dog. When she bouncing towards him, he turned to Trahern and glowered. "I didn't leave yeh any way yer wouldn't leave me. I wasn't gonna stick around and wait fer yeh with all them shields about."

Trahern glowered at him, and turned away. "Did yeh get it? 'Cause I didn't."

"Aye," said Dunion, forming his hands into fists. "I got it."

With a nod, Trahern crept away from him, shouting at the men in the camp to get up. They were leaving, and none of them wanted to stick around in case that noble's guard came to their wits and searched after them. Dunion was first to be ready to leave, he had packed his things in readiness the night before they broke into the noble's home, and he sat atop his horse as he waited.

He didn't know why, exactly, he often found himself travel with these men because he preferred to be on his own. These men only bothered him and teased Wolf, they had taught her that if only of them said "squirrel" she was to run to the tree they pointed at and bark at it. It was humorous to watch but whenever Wolf returned, she no longer got a reward, and Dunion wasn't going to edge her on, so she went on in disappointment.

Dunion supposed that the only reason he did travel with these men was because of Nerth. Nerth was married to Dunion's sister, Thelma, and they had a young son. Over the time that Nerth and Thelma had been married, Dunion had grown close to the bloke. He wasn't in Dunion's eyes a cruel man, if he were he wouldn't have married his sister.

It was little over a year ago, two years after Nerth had been wedded to Thelma, Nerth had introduced Dunion to Trahern. Dunion didn't like Trahern then, or now, but he provided Dunion a chance to make a few extra coins, and gold was not something Dunion could turn away from. Gold was needed. Dunion's brother and sisters and Nama needed to be sheltered and feed. Trahern offered him chance to acquire more than what he was. In the end it worked, Dunion didn't like it, but it worked. It had to work, there were very few other options left.

.

Dunion had been nearing his twentieth summer when his parents left this world. By that time he had been preparing himself for a family of his own, the possibility of a wife and later children. His father had hopes of marrying him to a marketer's daughter. Dunion liked Cait well enough. She was kind and lovely, though she kept to herself most of the time. He had thought at the time that she would have made a fine wife, at least he'd be able to deal with her, maybe he would even learn to love her given enough time. The marriage was going to be a unity for his father, who ran a fishing yard with Dunion's uncles, and a successful merchant but things didn't work out that way.

When the sickness came, it destroyed everything in its path. No one knew who the sickness came to be, or where it came from. Some people claimed it was the working of the gods, that it was their way to wipe away the wickedness of the world, a punishment for the sins of their people. Dunion's mother claimed that it was the gods' way of letting them know that Dunion was not to marry Cait, and perhaps it was. Whatever the reason was, however the sickness came about, didn't matter. What mattered is what it did to the people and towns that were touched by it.

The sickness had no name, none that Dunion knew of, and it had entered the western coast of the Empire some seven years before, first appearing near Kuasta. There seemed to have been no pattern to the disease, and so there was no warning; it flared up and raved through the region like a wild fire, wiping out many of its inhabitants in a brief but terrible holocaust before disappearing altogether. All those affected by the illness withered away in fever and madness. There were very few who survived the disease, and those who did were often crippled beyond repair.

Dunion remembered men, women, and children laying out streets or looking out of the windows of homes, their skin clinging close to their bones, their eyes sunken, hopeless, as they looked into the sky. They would scream or babble nonsense, their boney fingers picking at the peeling paint or touching almost absently their faces or sometimes their limp and dulled hair. Many buildings were a pile of runes and ashes, and many people were without homes and families. Children ramed the streets looking for shelter and food, mothers mourned their lost children and husbands, and men would look out both lost and angry, their breathe smelling strongly of mead. The acrid smell of sick, and burned flesh that plagued the air is what he remembered most; that sweet, putrid and steaky smell so thick and rich he could almost taste it. He doubted he would ever really get the smell of burning flesh out of his nose entirely, no matter how long he'd live he knew he would remember it.

It was like watching something that was once so lively and lovely wither away, like a flower as the seasons edged towards winter, or that was how Abagail had once described it. It was a hard sight to bear, made even worse when Dunion's younger siblings came down with it, and then his mother and father. His father had died first, only a week after he first became ill, and then his younger brother Gennior, his mother followed her son within hours. Cai, however, had somehow survived, lived through the disease. When Cai had taken a turn towards health, Dunion had moved the remainder of his family immediately, far from their home near Teirm, in his last defense to keep his family safe.

For a time they lived near Ludène, surviving off of odd jobs that Dunion picked up, before he decided it was safe and moved to a farm home near the town of Culdaff. They've lived there since, their father's once well off business destroyed, and with it any hopes of a steady income.

.

They traveled two weeks with no hearsay of a single shield, but soon they found theirselves lost in the middle of a vacant farming country. In the time they journeyed not a single human soul, other than those Dunion normally saw, were seen. This was not unusual, Trahern normally kept them in the back countries, but it was uncommon when they were following a road. Dunion saw many vacant buildings, standing like skeletons in the daylight, that were once homes or shops or an occasional barn, their walls so marred he could not tell what they truly were. The land was filled with ghosts, and none of them were a decent soul.

That day was not one that began with any sort of good will. The moment Dunion wrenched his eyes open he wished he had not. It was so cold it felt as if the dead were breathing on him. The air felt brittle as if a storm was about to break over him. He wanted, more than anything, to return the numb warmth of sleep, but Wolf nuzzled her nose against his arm. Her nose was chilled and wet, she had likely just finished drinking water from the stream. Where her nose touched his skin, he felt his hair raise chillingly.

With a groan, Dunion stood, unable to return to sleep. Wolf protected his actions with a snort-like groan, lifting her head to look at him before taking over his blankets, curling in on herself with her tail tucked underneath her.

"Good marrow," Parlan said, eyeing him critically. "I've been wondering when you'd get up."

Dunion scoffed and glanced up at the sky. "How long have you awake?"

"Since the sky changed hue," he said cheerfully. He closed his eye and poked at the fire. "It'll be some time before the rest of them get up. Sit down, Dunion. Relax. Eat. Do whatever yeh please."

Dunion went over to the fire, seeking its warmth, and sat close to it. He rubbed his face with his hands. "What happened to yer eye?" he asked, after a moment of listening to Parlan's humming. He didn't know why he had asked, maybe to shut the man up.

Parlan blinked at him before grinning crookedly. "I traded it," he said.

Dunion leaned back, glancing at the older man skeptically. "You traded it?"

"Aye," he said before laughing. He turned away, continuing his humming.

The rest of the men awoke not long after Dunion did. That day they traveled, watching as a banking of clouds grew out the horizon. Dunion watched as the clouds, like towers of marble, and felt as the wind turned colder with each moment.

This was the most nerve wrecking day yet, with the icy storm threatening to break over their heads any moment. They needed to find shelter and quickly else they risked freezing to death. The sky sent its first complaint over them in a deafening boom of thunder, and the sky darkened.

Trahern looked anxiously up at the sky, judging it. "Keep riding," he said, changing their direction to gain them time. "It an't gonna break on us yet."

The land they were traveling through divvied monotonously before them. Dunion didn't think that the valley would ever end. It seemed to go on endlessly. They couldn't travel as quickly as they wanted to, the land was dangerous; pitted with hallows and jagged rock, threatening to twist their ankles, and thick with burrs and small thistles. These were deathly lands, with its poor turf, no honest life could grow here, and so it a perfect place for them to travel through. No one would be following them, no one would be out here unless they were hiding.

Dunion rubbed the neck of his horse, and pushed him forward. A black and white dapple coated horse, bred from hard travel, was named Magpie. He hadn't been the one to name his horse, that honor had gone to his sister, Abagail. He remembered regretting asking for a name when he brought the horse home and the harebrained names she listed to him before demanding that he name his horse Magpie. He decided then that he was never asking Abagail for a name again, she came up with horrible names.

They stopped once, late in the afternoon. Trahern stopped in his talking with Parlan and Sayer when Parlan pointed to the horizon and said something. Sayer looked back at Dunion and smirked, causing him to frown at him, then took off in the direction Parlan had pointed in. Dunion looked then, and saw a red glow in the distance, like a gleaming ruby.

Thinking briefly on following after him, Dunion decided against it. If Sayer wanted to chase ghosts, let him. Instead Dunion dismounted from Magpie and took out a hunk of bread, tearing it half and handing a piece to Nerth.

"What's he after?" Nerth asked taking the bread.

"Like I know," Dunion muttered, biting into the bread, watching the dark figure of Sayer for a time.

Sayer returned moments later, a shining stone held in his hands, looked annoyed. "It's worthless," he said to Trahern. "Rocks is worthless. No one an't gonna buy ah rock."

Trahern studied the thing for a moment before shrugging. "Toss it, then." He turned away.

Parlan came closer to them, studying the stone with a greedy expression. "I'll take it," he said. "Me girls is always beggin' fer me to bring 'em something, they is. They'd like it."

With another shrug on Trahern's behalf, the stone was handed to Parlan and they pressed forward, Parlan packing the object firmly in his bags. Soon after the wind suddenly rose, a chilling, buffeting blast that chilled Dunion to his bones, and a curtain of snow rushed past them in blankets.

Dunion shivered, and frowned.

He did not wish to end up like the king from his grandmother's tale, his life sucked out from by the winter's chill. But they needed shelter, soon, or else the storm would steal their lives. Its winds were already numbing him, he could no longer feel his toes. He searched for Wolf and finding her, it seemed as if she were completely unaffected as she pounced at a rabbit hole, and he shook his head. After whistling to her, she trotted to him, and followed dutifully after him, something he was thankfully for as he didn't want to lose her in this snow.

Trahern seemed to realize this as well for the next building they passed, he moved them towards it, and dismounted he claimed that they would stay there. It was roofed, the walls on one side whole, but walking inside Dunion saw the fireplace and the wall behind it in crumbles. It would do, though the build would hold very little warmth it would protect them from the worse of the storm.


End file.
